...unless their computers are down. :) Seriously though, although there are plenty of algorithms that crawl news all day and trade accordingly, I still think t

...unless their computers are down. :) Seriously though, although there are plenty of algorithms that crawl news all day and trade accordingly, I still think there is money to be made by watching the news with a financial eye. After reading Google's "A New Approach to China" post (which I saw on HN minutes after it was posted), I specifically remember thinking it would be a good time to go long BIDU. And of course, kicked myself after the stock gained ~15% over the next three days. The market responds fast, but consensus is not always reached immediately. I think the opportunity exists because events like this are like tiny "black swan" events, the lasting effects of which are not immediately perceptible to most people, let alone a computer algorithm. It's easy to write a script to trade on something like "expected earnings were 3c/share, actual earnings 5c/share" but this is complex information. The ability to put the pieces together and realize what a significant outage this is, why it is significant, why there is not an easy fix, and what most companies will do about it (prolly sue 'em or switch to Symantec) is more than a computer can do. And I'm sure hedge funds are doing the math right now, trying to estimate the possible damages from lawsuits and how it changes the company's value. But remember, you don't have to beat the fastest hedge funds, you just have to beat most of the market, and you'll still make money. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens at market open tomorrow :)